All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth...

And I must have been an awfully good girl this year because I already got 'em!

Fun times on the change table

She wakes - Mom's version

Breaking the "rules"

There are lots of things that you are/aren't supposed to do when you have a baby. These are too numerous to list but the thing that comes to mind as one of the biggest no-no's is blankets in the crib. Apparently there is lots of research to indicate that the risk of SIDS increases when babies have blankets, stuffed animals, etc. in their cribs. While I don't believe that the researchers are lying, we have chosen not to follow this recommendation. Lily loves sleeping with her blankets and often push them up and around her face. She uses the blankets to soothe herself back to sleep and given how hard we've worked to teach her to self-soothe, I refuse to take this away from her. I guess that we are taking a chance that something could happen to her but (especially at this point in her life) I'm not that worried about it and am willing to take the risk. I suspect that this is just one example in a long list of "rules" that Scott and I will be breaking but as I'm quickly learning, being a parent is all about following your heart and making decisions that are best for your family.

Sleep training - holding steady

We've been doing sleep training for the past week or so and we've seen a vast improvement in Lily's sleeping habits. Things aren't perfect but is there really such a thing as a perfect sleeping baby? (I think that they are as mythical as pink unicorns!) Lily no longer wakes every hour and in fact, has actually slept for more than 7 1/2 hours in a row on two occasions. She does often wake in the middle of the night but will usually only cry for a short period of time before falling back to sleep. Normal nights now look like this - bedtime at 7:30pm, a feed at 11pm, a feed at 4am (although I am working toward eliminating this one, especially since I know that she can now go longer than 5 hours without eating), a feeding/diaper change at 6am and up for the day between 8-9am. She has 2-3 naps per day, usually for 1 - 2 1/2 hours each time. Scott probably has the hardest time with listening to her cry, especially for naps (honestly, he rarely wakes in the night anymore and often says "wow, what a great night" when Lily has actually been up crying a few times...). As for me, it was really hard to listen to her cry for the first night but I know that this program works and my commitment to it helps get me through those crying spells. Plus, I think that the mental shift towards accepting nighttime crying has allowed me to sleep better - I usually know that she has cried in the night but it often doesn't seem like it was for very long...either that's true or my brain is just telling my body to go back to sleep because it knows that Lily will be a-ok.

Dancing Queen

Lily loves music! Watching her dance in her exersaucer is one of my favorite things.

Fun with plastic

The trouble with parenting

People always lament the fact that babies don't come with a manual. They say that parenting is so hard and they wish that babies came with instructions. In my mind, parenting is hard partly because there are too many instruction manuals. Don't get me wrong, it's super challenging to figure out how to parent. Lily is constantly changing and going through various developmental issues and we are often don't have a clue about how to handle whatever new issue is before us. I spend much of my day researching baby issues - how to get them to sleep better, how to feed them, how to dress them in the winter, how to play with them, etc. etc. etc. Trouble is, there is no consensus on how to deal said issue and I'm often left more confused than when I started. I firmly believe that the majority of parenting programs will work on most babies, simply because it provides guidance and structure for parents to follow. Having said that, I often am left unsatisfied with the multitude of advice that I've found and I wish that researchers and educators would learn to be consistent in helping people learn how to parent.

Sleep training - Day four

I worked last night so I wasn't around for Lily's bedtime routine but Scott tells me that she went to bed around 6:30pm (after eating some supper with him) and woke at about 10pm for a bottle. She didn't have an third nap today but probably could have used one (she's fussy at 5pm but has a hard time settling to sleep at this time - I'm still not too sure about how to manage a third nap). She was sleeping when I got home at 11:30pm but woke when I dropped something and she heard my voice. I so badly wanted to go in to see her but I decided that it would likely be harmful to the habits that we are trying to create and I decided to let her be. She cried for about 5 minutes and went back to sleep. She woke this morning, not surprisingly, at 4am for a feed and at 6am for a diaper change. I'm feeling really good about the sleep training, despite the fact that it was so horrible the first night. I think that we may have broken Lily of her frequent nighttime wakings and I think that she has finally learned some self-soothing techniques for when she does wake up. All in all, I'm pretty happy that we went with "Cry it out" and I'd highly recommend it to anyone struggling with sleeping issues for their baby.

Sleep training - Day three

There were some interesting developments last night in the sleeping department. Lily ate some supper (actually ate a fair amount) but mostly because I fed it to her off of my finger. She did eat the beets off the spoon but she refused the egg until I used the finger technique. Maybe the spoon is too hard on her teeth? As with most things, we have no idea why it worked, we just know that it did. After supper, we did a quick run to the mall in hopes of getting a Santa photo but she was just too tired. By the time that we got home, she was SO ready for bed and went to sleep at 7:30pm. She didn't end up having her third nap of the day because she was fussing in the crib when Scott got home from work and I figured that he should have some time to play with her. Anyways, back to my story...I waited for Lily to wake up at her usual feeding time of 10pm but when she didn't wake up, I decided that I was too tired to wait for her and would just get up whenever she next woke up. Lo and behold, it was 3:00am before she woke! I got 5 straight hours of sleeping and was thrilled with that. I fed her at 3:00am and she went right back to sleep until 6:30am. I fed her again and we both fell back to sleep until 8:30am. She's currently sleeping for her first nap of the day. I hope that this is the turning point of the sleeping training program and not just some weird fluke associated with eating dinner or some other random reason. I love knowing that she can now go 7+ hours without feeding and I desperately hope that we are out of the 'waking every 3 hrs' stage (at least for awhile!).

Baby ski bunny

Despite the fact that I've lived in Alberta for many years, I've never been a huge fan of winter. It's cold and I have a hard time getting outside to exercise. However, I've forced myself to take up cross-country skiing so that I have a way to get outdoors, even when there is lots of snow on the ground. When Lily was born, I wasn't sure if I'd still be able to get out xc skiing but I was willing to try. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to pull her in the Chariot and I wasn't sure that we'd be able to get the ski attachment as it's quite expensive. Well, we still can't afford the ski attachment but luckily, I was able to borrow one and go out skiing with Lily and two friends last weekend. Turns out that the hardest part of taking Lily cross-country skiing was the trail side diaper change - it isn't super easy to pull the Chariot but it isn't all that bad. I wouldn't want to take it on a hilly trail but skiing on the Great Divide Trail in Lake Louise was perfect!

Sleep training - Day two

Well, we survived another night of CIO. I was so tired last night and so I barely remember how much Lily cried but Scott says that she had a big crying spell at 2am. I don't think that it was as long or as loud as the night before because I hardly noticed it. I know that she also woke up for two other short periods of crying but again, they were much less than the night before. I fed her when she woke up at 5am and was happy to see that she seemed genuinely hungry. It seems like we've made some headway in this whole CIO process and I hope that we only have another night or two to go before she's sleeping the whole night through.

Belly laughs

Back when Lily liked to eat...

Sleep training - Day one

I reached my boiling point this weekend and decided that it was time to get serious about sleep training. Lily was waking up every hour or so again and I've had enough. I'm not doing well on such little sleep and I don't like the person that I am at 3am. So, we started last night. I decided that my goal is for Lily to sleep 5 hours straight. My reading on sleeping habits for babies tells me that it is reasonable to expect that six month old babies sleep for 5-7 hours straight. This seems like a realistic time frame to me and while I'd love to have 7 hrs of sleep, I figure that I'll start with a dream of 5 hrs. So, Lily went to bed at her usual time of 7pm. As always, she woke at 11pm for a feed. After feeding her, I put her down and tried to get to sleep. Unfortunately, it took me almost until 12:30am to fall asleep, just when she woke for the first time. She cried for 15 minutes but I didn't go to her. We both fell back to sleep and she woke at 1:45am. She cried for about 45 mins this time but finally fell asleep at about 2:30am. It was awful listening to her cry for so long - I hated every minute of it. The trouble with "Cry it out" lies within the strategy's name. It's so incredibly difficult to listen to your baby cry and know that they just want you to comfort them. You feel very guilty about not responding to their tears but you hope that you are making the right decision by trying this strategy. Lily woke again at 3:30am and while it wasn't the 5 hours of sleep that I was hoping for, I decided to go to her this time. I fed her and put her back to sleep. She woke again at 5:30am, at which time Scott brought her in to me. After another feed, she went back to sleep but was up for the day at 8am. I figure that we all only got a few hours of sleep last night but I'm hoping that it was worth it as the first step in the sleep training. Lily was super tired today (not surprising) and had 3 long naps. I even managed to sneak in an afternoon nap. My book tells me that sleep training should take about 3 days. I sure hope so because I just don't know how long I can listen to her crying at night.